Hoax

A hoax is an attempt to trick an audience into believing that something false is real. Generally there is some material object involved, which is actually a forgery. Unlike a fraud or con (which usually has an audience of one or a few), which are made for illicit financial or material gain, or a fraud which is perpetrated to support a false religion, a hoax is often perpetrated as a practical joke with a humorous intent, to cause embarrassment, for personal aggrandizement or to serve political purposes. Still, many confidence tricks and the like have also been labeled as hoaxes.

External links

• Museum of Hoaxes
• idiosyntactix's culture jamming page
• List of miscellaneous Hoaxes & Pranks
• TREND Micro(tm) Hoaxes
• Virus Hoax Busters
• US DOE Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC) Hoaxbusters Web Page
• http://www.snopes.com/

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